Clergyman Takes Aim At Apartheid

JACKSONVILLE, FLA. — He is another symbol of irony in a country layered with a history of enigma and irony.

He is the son of a black preacher in the Afrikaner-dominated Apostolic Faith Mission, a Pentecostal sect that provides religious support for South Africa`s policy of racial compartmentalization.

He is an ordained clergyman in that conservative denomination, although he has been suspended for his political activities. He has been detained by South African authorities several times, and in 1985 he was tried-and finally acquitted-on charges of high treason.

And now, the 36-year-old Rev. Frank Chikane, who says he must fight against his government for treating him as a ``less than fully human being,`` is in a position to make a potentially decisive impact for change and reform in the system of apartheid practiced in his homeland.

He has succeeded the widely known Dutch Reformed Church dissident C.F. Beyers Naude as general secretary of the South African Council of Churches, a position that provides Rev. Chikane with considerable influence in the ongoing political and moral struggle over the future shape of South Africa`s social structure.

``I believe I am called to do work at a time when our crisis is deepening in South Africa-when the church itself is struggling to see how it should address the crisis,`` he said in a news briefing here before he spoke to the recent governing board meeting of the National Council of Churches in the USA. He also called on American Christians to keep the spotlight on South Africa in order to remind the world that ``we can never call normal the brutality`` of apartheid.

``The world gets overwhelmed by evil, and it gets used to pain and suffering and calls it normal,`` he said. ``Ten years ago, when 10 people were detained in South Africa it was a big issue. In the past year, 30,000 people have been jailed and the world community accepts it.``

Rev. Chikane`s selection as the chief officer of the South African Council of Churches comes after his emergence as a leading figure in the United Democratic Front, an important and controversial movement aimed at overthrowing the apartheid system.

He also had become one of the country`s more forceful proponents of liberation theology through his work at the Institute of Contextual Theology, and he was one of the signers of the 1985 ``Kairos Document,`` which sharply assailed South African religious groups for adopting an ever more passive resistance toward apartheid.

His appointment to the key ecumenical office in Johannesburg is all the more striking because his own church has declined to join the South African Council of Churches-and in fact would repudiate much of the work the council undertakes.

The 250,000-member Apostolic Faith Mission is about 80 percent Afrikaans- speaking, Rev. Chikane said, and most of those adherents are former Dutch Reformed members who felt their church was becoming too liberal and concessionary in its social stands toward the nation`s nonwhite majority.

He was suspended from pastoral service in that church for his preachments and activities on behalf of black militancy and nationalism. That development is hardly shocking, considering his claim that earlier in his ministry he had been placed under detention by civil authorities and tortured at the hands of a deacon in his church.

``People who call themselves Christians are brutalizing us,`` he said.

``South Africa is a Christian country-77 percent of the population is Christian. For some of us to still be Christian is a miracle. I could have abandoned the faith, but I have made the other choice.``

Time is growing short-and perhaps has passed-for a peaceful and

``Christian`` resolution to the South African conflict, he warned.

``Young people are picking up arms as Christians,`` he said. ``They are prepared to die for the cause. I was brought up to believe that you can change South Africa by preaching the gospel. But it is clear that not all people will be converted. Whites benefit from the system, so you have to get people who are highly motivated morally to give up their privileges.``

Regrettably, he added, it does not appear that ``those in power are going to move purely in response to moral appeals.``

Still, the youthful-looking clergyman refused to accept as inevitable a bloody revolution for his land.

``I don`t believe in evolutionary change-for that happens at the pace allowed by those who benefit from the system,`` Rev. Chikane said. ``But a revolutionary change creates a situation where a lot of people could be killed.

``The change I believe in is one in which white South Africa accepts that this is a grossly unjust system in which we live, and that we come together tomorrow to discuss how the country is to be run.``

The South African Council of Churches represents about 15 million Christians in 16 different denominations, most of them English-speaking and most of them with substantial nonwhite membership.

Rev. Chikane said he will use his tenure as the council`s leading officer to continue his crusade to ``liberate the gospel from the hands of the oppressors who use it for their own ends.`` He asserted that God is ``the God of all people-but God does take sides with the victims of oppression. God can`t be with you in your racism.``

That is an elementary Sunday school lesson that students in South Africa- and many other classrooms around the world-have not yet seemed to learn.